Pope's Assassin

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Book: Read Pope's Assassin for Free Online
Authors: Luis Miguel Rocha
you about to tell a lie, Rafael?" he said, looking at the class provocatively. "The Bible is the first historical, fantastic, science fi ction, gospel, thriller, and romance novel since the beginning of time."
        "Do you need something, Jacopo?" Rafael asked firmly. "I'm in the middle of a lecture."
        "I beg your pardon for sticking my sensible opinion into these minds instead of what you stick in there . . . whatever that is," he joked. "Do you know that after all these centuries and millennia, everything we read in the Bible still has no archaeological confi rmation? None. And many of the 'characters'"—he sketched quotation marks in the air as he said the word—"and locations that are cited in this book, so important to so many, are not mentioned anywhere else? Only the Bible mentions them, but since it is the Bible . . ." He stopped talking and assumed a serious tone. "I need to tell you something."
        "Can't it wait?"
        "Obviously not," and he left the classroom.
        Rafael excused himself from the class and promised he'd be only a minute.
        "What's happening?" Rafael asked when he left and shut the door. "What is it that can't wait?"
        "Yaman Zafer," Jacopo said.
        Rafael's eyes lit up. Now Jacopo had all his attention. "Yaman Zafer?"
        "Yes," the older man confi rmed.
        Rafael turned his back and sighed. Jacopo didn't see him close his eyes. He might have cried, but he didn't know how. Life sometimes dries up a person's eyes, making him weep blood inside instead of water outside.
        Jacopo was not the type of man who could be called sensitive. Sixty-six years had set a cloak of rationality over his feelings, shielding him from human emotions . . . or at least he liked to think so. Rafael couldn't shield his feelings, but even so he was the coldest bastard Jacopo knew.
        "Do you have any more information?" Rafael asked, turned back to him again, looking at him with sad, serious eyes.
        "Someone called him in the middle of the night to talk about a parchment. That's what Irene said. He caught a fl ight the next morn ing, and . . ." He left the rest unspoken.
        "Where?" the priest wanted to know.
        "Paris. An old refrigerator warehouse on Saint-Ouen."
        Rafael continued to look at him steadily and then headed for the exit.
        "Paris it is."

9

    S himon David was a conscientious old man, or at least he liked to think so. His neighbors didn't use that word, but substituted another, less complimentary one, but he didn't know about that, so he wasn't hurt. For them Shimon was an old busybody, always attentive to the smallest movement on the street and in the neighborhood. If someone wanted to know if a particular person was home or arriving late, Shimon was the person to ask. He would even know whether the delay would be long or short. The limit of his knowledge stretched from one end of the street to the other, and nothing else mattered to him. A widower, he had lived there for more than two decades. All his life he had been a mailman. He could tell a lot about a person from the mail he received. Shimon knew many things about his neighbors, more than they sometimes imagined, because no one wanted to know about him.
        The street was in the suburbs of the Holy City. In the distance in the midst of buildings and stores, someone who knew what to look for could make out the gold cupola of the Dome of the Rock, within the walls.
        From the same window from which he kept track of his neighbors, Shimon could see his beloved city of Jerusalem, the center of the world.
        This afternoon Shimon didn't appear at his window. His neighbors came home from work tired and didn't spare a glance to check his absence. They entered their houses as always without looking back, so they didn't notice whether Shimon was at his window or not.
        Movements inside the house of Marian, an old woman of ninety who

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